A Girl Like You
Author: Gemma Burgess
Publisher: Avon
Publication Date: January 6th 2011
From Goodreads:
"I've discovered the secret to successful singledom. I'm acting like a man. And it's working."
After breaking up with her boyfriend of, well, forever, Abigail Wood must learn how to be single from scratch. Her dating skills are abysmal, and she ricochets from disaster to disaster - until Robert, one of London's most notorious lotharios, agrees to coach her. With his advice, she learns to navigate the bastard-infested waters of the bar scene, and practices the art of being bulletproof. The new Abigail is cocky, calm, composed..but what happens when she meets her match?
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I loved, I mean LOVED A Girl Like You. I was a huge fan of chick lit a couple of years ago, but since been bored with it. Occasionally I will read one here or there and I am so glad I do because I get to find gems like these.
I loved the dialogue, so witty. I laughed so much while reading A Girl Like You. I adore Gemma Burgess's writing, her sense of humor is off the chart. It was predictable but told in a more exciting way for me. No insta-love here, it's all done nice and slow. I read this in one afternoon, and that is hard for me to do now, unless it's freaking awesome.
Abigail and Robert's group of friends are the best. A fun group of people, what's not to like.
Read it, seriously. Definitely one of my favorites this year.
Now please let me start by saying that I absolutely loved Gemma Burgess's debute novel "The Dating Detox" and hence had extremely high expectations for her second novel "A Girl Like You"
ReplyDeleteI'm always kind of dubious about the whole Play Boy falls in love and gives up a habit of a life time to promise eternal fidelity etc type thing.
So perhaps I was immediately thinking "hhmmmm" when I read this book, because the premise of that type of plot is generally (or usually) very Mills & Boon.
However, the author was good at convincing her reading audience as to the Hero's feelings, so that I thought "ok may be not eternal fidelity but definitely the average marriage survival rate" which isn't always accomplished by chic lit authors.
I really did enjoy the book until The Baddie alternative guy came along (the foil to make our Hero look good, which wasn't really required here but oh well). He was the catalyst that ruined a promising book as it became really predictable.
Now I've had to review a lot of chic lit books and believe me the "other guy" baddie (whatever) is always blond when the hero is dark-haired. It became obvious by then where the book was going.
I became impatient to get to the end just to see if my predictions were right and it was.
Otherwise I did enjoy the book, particularly the beginning. I liked that Abygail wasn't the usual media working girl but had a really good banking job to begin with. I'm also impressed with how the author manages to understand and relay the banking industry as most authors just pass it off as "stock and shares" not knowing any more detail than that. I also liked that the book didn't drag.
But I think The Datign Detox is still my all time fav. Its mostly due to it being very fresh and very un-Mills&Boon like without the melodrama found in this book.